Race-baiting mailer riles some lawyers, black leaders

September 29, 2009|By Aaron Deslatte, Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida's trial-lawyer lobby is coming under renewed fire over a race-baiting mailer in a recent election that has prominent contributors ready to quit and black legislators demanding the organization "clean house."

Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan, the face of the prominent Morgan & Morgan firm, has threatened to resign from the Florida Justice Association and is waiting for results of an internal investigation being conducted by former Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan.

The investigation "will have to be very, very convincing for me not to resign," Morgan said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Gary Siplin, chairman of the 24-member legislative Black Caucus, is demanding the FJA "clean house" of staffers involved in the mailer.

FJA Executive Director Scott Carruthers admitted last week that a trial-lawyer-financed committee (known as a "527" for the section of the IRS code it files under) paid for a direct-mail piece that pictured President Barack Obama, Black Panthers and the Rev. Louis Farrakhan and a warning that "armed thugs" might intimidate voters at the polls.

The mailer was intended to persuade Republican primary voters to apply for absentee ballots so FJA could then call and mail them to urge a vote against former House Speaker John Thrasher in a Sept. 15 primary for a Jacksonville-based Senate seat.

Thrasher is a longtime foe of the trial bar and supports limits on damages awarded in civil lawsuits.

Morgan: Lawyers might quit

Morgan said Monday that his son had quit the FJA to protest the mailer and that many of the African-American lawyers in his firm -- some of whom gave money to the committee that paid for the mailer -- might do the same.

Siplin, an Orlando Democrat writing for the Black Caucus, said the mail piece was "deplorable and represents the very worst of political campaigning."

"It is obvious from the mailer that the FJA, who created, approved and funded this mailer has racially biased proclivities that are manifested in their thinking and actions," he wrote. " . . . [I]t is our strong desire for FJA to clean house within its association of anyone who spearheaded or who had any involvement" with the mailer.

Ironically, Siplin was targeted by 527s funded by the trial lawyers during his Democratic primary a year ago against Maurice "Doc" Woodward. A federal judge subsequently threw out state regulations that had required 527s to report their contributors to the state, which enabled easy identification of who backed the groups.

Carruthers said his staff saw the mailer before it was sent to voters in the district, which stretches from Nassau County to Daytona Beach, but that no one in a leadership position within the FJA knew about it in advance. It was produced by a Tallahassee political consultant and sent by a 527 called the Conservative Voters' Coalition.

Last week, Jacksonville trial lawyer Tom Edwards said he had resigned from his FJA-affiliated political committee, Conservative Citizens for Justice, when he learned it had given a $69,000 check to the Voters' Coalition group without his approval.

Now, other big-check-writing members like Morgan are demanding to know how it was approved. "It is a crisis," said Morgan. "I'm not going to give them another penny if it turns out to be what it appears to be."

Group seeks those responsible

FJA President Michael Haggard, a Coral Gables lawyer, said Kogan's review would "determine who was responsible and who made the errors" and report what, if any, safeguards the group has to keep similar situations from occurring.

"These things should never cross a moral line," Haggard said.

Morgan resolved another question in the race, acknowledging that trial lawyers backed Ponte Vedra activist Dan Quiggle. At one point, Thrasher's supporters covertly videotaped visitors to Quiggle's home to try to prove trial-lawyer involvement. Morgan said his firm gave $25,000 to a 527 supporting Quiggle.